The Plague Years (Book 1): Hell is Empty and All the Devils Are Here

by Rounds, Mark

  Chapter 3

  May 5th, Friday, 3:45 pm PDT

  The meeting got off to a late start because the Air Force C-20, which in civilian terms is a militarized Gulfstream executive jet, that was bringing in Lt. General Buckley who commanded I Corps, had to skirt a line of thunderstorms that covered most of central Washington. As a result, a flight that would normally last thirty minutes from Joint Base Lewis/McChord in Tacoma Washington to the Tri-Cities regional airport had taken almost two hours. The general was not amused.

  In addition to the General, there was an Air Force full colonel from the 62nd Airlift Wing, two National Guard colonels, one Army and one Air Force, a bunch of suits, and Mr. Macklin from Homeland Security.

  “The NORTHCOM Commander is in discussions with the SECDEF about activating the CBRN Response Enterprise, and asked me to come research the potential implications of this zombie plague shit... However, I have a reception to attend at 18:30 hours,” said General Buckley briskly, “for the Commandant of the Marine Corps who, for reasons known only to himself, is touring our facilities at Ft. Lewis. I would appreciate an aggressive meeting agenda. My pilot is monitoring the weather and currently informs me that we have to be wheels up and airborne by 16:50 hours for me to make my schedule. He has my permission to interrupt if weather parameters change. For your information, I have read the preliminary reports concerning the spread rate and the symptoms if the disease. I find it very troubling and some parts are a little hard to believe. So it’s your meeting for the next hour.”

  “I would like to thank you for making time to be here General Buckley,” began Mr. Macklin. “We also have members of the …..”

  “That’s enough Macklin,” said General Buckley. “Save the hearts and flowers for after I’ve left. Dr. Riley, I believe this is your show.”

  “Thank you General,” said Dr. Riley. “Given our time restraints, I am going to ask you to review the briefing notes provided concerning current treatment methods and possible quarantine options which were the first two items on the agenda. I will sum those points up briefly. We have no successful treatment. The main symptoms that matter for this meeting are a delusional mental state and violent, cannibalistic behaviors. There are many flavors of quarantine but the big issues are manpower and which routes to block.

  “I’d like to ask Chad Strickland to brief you on the potential spread of the disease.”

  “Right, I’ll cut this short,” said Chad. He had expected to sit for forty-five minutes before he even got a chance to talk; now he was on the spot to make it quick and pointed. His time in the Air Force doing intel briefings for VIP’s had shown him that when ‘the General’ wanted to speed things up, you didn’t dawdle.

  “I am going to skip a bunch of slides and show you my epidemiology maps. Our current model shows that we should have non-symptomatic suffers of the disease or carriers if you will, in all the western US states by this point. The next slide shows the results of the epicenters in New York and Miami, We can expect to see the same sort of coverage east of the Mississippi before the end of the month. If there is no treatment or any form of quarantine, symptomatic sufferers of the disease will top one million before the end of the month and will exceed thirty million by the end of the summer as the final slide shows with symptomatic sufferers in every state. Furthermore …”

  “I think your analyst is exaggerating the issue,” said Macklin loudly. “We have a low impact solution with proper …”

  “Enough Macklin,” said General Buckley. “I have heard your point of view all the way over here on the plane. This is Dr. Riley’s show so let him run it. Strickland, continue.”

  “Thank you sir,” said Chad. It did not escape Chad’s notice that he was receiving the evil eye from Macklin. “My base assumptions were that there is a class of symptomatic sufferers that lack medical insurance or for various reasons do not wish to seek medical care. And that this class of sufferer will spread the disease aggressively over the summer months. This is because several factors are making them more mobile.”

  “Can you be more specific on these factors?” said one of the suits that had come with General Buckley.

  “Yes sir,” said Chad. “The migrant worker population is becoming mobile. Here in Washington, grapevine and fruit tree pruning is coming to an end. There is going to be a need for harvesting down south very soon. Colleges across the country are letting students out for the summer. Both of these populations often lack proper medical insurance. Then there are also illegal aliens crossing the borders in record numbers. Many of them are traveling through the epicenters in California to where ever they are going and some of them are likely becoming infected. They tend to avoid any form of official notice. Finally, drug users and other petty criminals are moving out of California to take advantage of the warmer weather elsewhere.”

  “What about some form of containment Dr. Strickland?”

  “That is what my group has worked on,” said Dr. Riley as he took the remote from Chad and flipped through a bunch of slides. “Thank you Dr. Strickland. I apologize for the slides being out of order, but containment will be difficult. If we assume normal law enforcement, Civil Defense volunteers and some National Guard support, we get almost no adjustment.”

  “Our analysis completely disagrees with this …” said Mr. Macklin.

  “I have heard your analysis Mr. Macklin, I want to hear theirs,” said General Buckley. “If this were an Army post, I’d have you ejected from the meeting…”

  “Well, it’s not,” said Macklin. “So you will listen to this. Our projects show a significantly slower growth when we use available CIVILIAN assets to block the interstates, rail lines and other major travel modes. Dr. Strickland’s own analysis shows that these are the major routes of infection. Just by blocking those routes, we can very nearly stop all growth.”

  “Yes, so you have said often and loudly,” said General Buckley testily. “Yet a very high ranking individual wanted me to hear another viewpoint. Dr. Strickland, it’s your analysis in both cases. Why do you think that following Mr. Macklin’s recommendations would have little effect?”

  “In simple terms,” said Chad flipping back through the slides, “it goes back to the demographics of the folks most likely not to seek medical attention and hence become the most likely spread the infection. The Department of Homeland Security’s plan would restrict everyone to twenty-five miles or so of their home and set up regional road blocks that you can’t travel beyond. What if people have no home?”

  “How do you mean?” asked an Air Force Colonel who smiled and seemed familiar. Chad noted that his name tag said Antonopoulos.

  “There couldn’t be two guys in the Air Force with that name and that moustache,” Chad thought and put the recognition away for later.

  “Simply this: migrant workers live in camps and motor homes that follow the work. They live paycheck to paycheck so when the work dries up, they move. If they don’t work, they don’t eat. If you stop them from moving, the available unskilled labor market will dry up fast. So they will move, even with a restriction, only they will take all the back roads and dirt trails and go around the roadblocks. They know the secondary routes because at least the illegal ones are trying hard to avoid being noticed, and the farms they work at are mostly connected by the secondary roads. They would flee from the Interstate if you even started checking ID’s.

  “The second group is the petty criminals. They don’t know the roads as well but they have a very strong interest in not being caught. Their best defense is to keep moving. If they get known, local law enforcement picks them up pretty efficiently. They will also find a way to move on.

  “Finally, we come to college students. The road blocks will have the most effect on them as they are by and large, law abiding. But they have a much stronger desire to get home. Enough of them will evade your roadblocks to get home. All it would take would be a Garmin GPS with a current update.

  In short, I don’t think the Homeland Security p
lan will slow that travel down much at all for the at risk populations and the simulations I ran using my assumptions support that viewpoint. Actually, there is some evidence that just putting these restrictions in place will accelerate the spread of the disease.”

  “Erskin, State Department,” said a small dark haired man in a finely tailored conservative suit. “There will be international implications if this gets out. Surely some form of Mr. Macklin’s solution could be made to work …”

  “I wish it could Mr. Erskin,” said Dr. Riley interrupting him before he could get started, “but the cat is already out of the bag. There are epicenters for this disease in London, Paris, Saigon, Moscow, and Tokyo. The world knows and they know where it came from.

  “But if we allowed the disease to spread for a while from these locations,” continued Erskin smoothly, “we could cast enough doubt, especially if the situation became ... chaotic … later.”

  “I am going to pretend that I did not hear a representative of the Government of United States of America condemn thousands if not millions of innocent people to a serious illness and a very unpleasant death just to make us look good,” said General Buckley forcefully. His voice was not loud but the menace in it was clear.

  “I have also been to a rodeo and a county fair and not only do the at risk demographics described seem plausible, I can tell you from personal experience as a teenager with a twelve pack of beer in the back of a pickup truck that I may or may not have been old enough to have, that the number of back roads, jeep trails and open fields in a rural area are truly immeasurable and many aren’t on any maps. No way can you close them all and lots of folks know about them. It is also clear this is above my pay grade but it is clear that something has to happen soon.”

  “That’s what I have been trying to say …” began Mr. Macklin, but the general, who had been to contentious meetings before, spoke forcefully.

  “You sir,” said General Buckley pointing vigorously at Macklin, “have been trying to say any damned thing that will get us to soft pedal this internally and I now see via Erskin over there, that you want to keep it quiet internationally too.”

  General Buckley then fixed Chad with a stare.

  “Strickland, your work has riled up some folks. Do you stand by it?”

  “Yes Sir,” said Chad with a gulp.

  “You sound former military,” said the General. “Did I read that right?”

  Before Chad could speak, Colonel Antonopoulos spoke up.

  “He was sir,” he said. “He was my intel analyst back when we were both young in the First Special Ops Wing out at Hurlburt Field.”

  “And you let him get out?”

  “Guilty, sir.”

  “Riley,” said the General as he turned away from Chad, effectively dismissing him, “I will need a secure room with secure com, audio, and document transfer. Are you set up for that?”

  “I can do that and video as well if you need it.”

  “Good, is there anything else I need to know before I go bet my stars on this?”

  “We have some backup data for Strickland’s talking points.”

  “Give me the Readers Digest Condensed version.”

  “We have had our first three cases just outside of Kennewick last night. We have been able to identify two deceased individuals. They were a newlywed couple who had just graduated from Seattle Pacific University. They were on their honeymoon when they attended a Christian band concert in Portland; ‘Third Day’ was the name of the group. That was a week ago. Their families lost track of them two days before they ended up here. Apparently they were headed home and became symptomatic. We think they contracted the disease through contact rather than fluids exchange.”

  “You said three,” said the General pointedly.

  “Yes, there was a third case today. He is conscious and lucid enough to question. Apparently, he occasionally visits prostitutes. One bit him. Police are trying to trace her but, like Chad said, petty criminals like that move and know how to fade.

  “We are also monitoring the condition of a sheriff’s deputy who got bit attempting to apprehend one of the previous sufferers. She is not yet symptomatic but west coast data shows that the biting is not an uncommon behavior and that she will likely become symptomatic. Enforcement of any quarantine is going to generate casualties among those who are watching the roads.”

  “Any more good news?” said General Buckley with a piercing stare.

  “There are details, but they are in your briefing notes,” said Riley. “Dr. Grieb has some information on the vectors of the disease, treatments and such but they are in the briefing package that you have read already.”

  “Mr. Erskin and Mr. Macklin, I am now going to go over my boss’s head and will call the NORTHCOM Commander, Chief of the Army, and various other luminaries with Dr. Riley’s shiny phone. I suspect that you will wish use the same device to speak to your superiors but effective immediately, I am declaring this briefing and supporting materials Top Secret, ORCON, and NOFORN. This means that until I or my superiors rescind it, no one can release this information without my written authority. There will also be no release of this information to any Foreign National without my personal written authority.”

  “But you can’t do that!” said Mr. Macklin. “I need to report to my boss as soon as this meeting is over.”

  “Call your legal department Macklin, you’ll find I can do just that, but be careful what you say and to whom because the FBI will be notified about the nature of this briefing before the day is out, and unless I miss my guess, any calls you will make will be gone over with a microscope. I recommend that you use Dr. Riley’s setup after I am done. This is just a suggestion mind you, but this must go up the chain NOW. Erskin, same applies to you.”

  Then the General spoke loudly to the whole room.

  “Everyone will kindly give my Aide-De-Camp your name and contact information. Until you have been briefed on appropriate security protocols, you may not speak to anyone on this. There is a bunch more but you will have to wait for the briefing.”

  May 5th, Friday, 7:31 pm PDT

  Special Agent Horace T. Macklin was sitting in his hotel room with some very fine Bunnahabhain eighteen year old scotch in his glass. He could hardly taste it. The interview with General Buckley’s aide had not been good. The phone call right after General Buckley’s confidentiality declaration to DHS legal counsel was even less helpful. Not only did they agree with General Buckley’s interpretation of the law, they made it clear that they REALLY didn’t even want to talk to him about this until they had guidance from the Deputy Director. It was pretty clear; his stock in Washington was low. He was wallowing in good scotch and self-pity when his personal cell phone rang.

  “Macklin.”

  “This is Deputy Director Erickson. I want you to listen and not talk. I just got off the phone with General McPherson. He is the Chief of Staff of the Army and Academy roommate of Lt. General Buckley. You remember General Buckley don’t you?

  “It was General McPherson’s impression that you had been dragging your feet on some pretty important disaster prep issues relating to the Plague. He also made it plain that you had been suppressing the latest data out of California for infection rates, spreading half truths about the paucity of DHS support, that you had interfered with local police procedures, and other bothersome charges. He also spoke at profane length about your parentage, eating habits, and made a couple of suggestions that are frankly, anatomically impossible. Just what the hell do you think you are playing at?!”

  “Sir, I was following your direction on keeping this out of the public eye so as not to arouse …”

  “I never said,” said Erickson forcefully interrupting Macklin before he could get started, “that you were to misinform or antagonize the very people who are providing us with the epidemiology data we need to make decisions. I never said that you were to horn your way onto a General’s private jet for God sakes, and tell him that the sky is bright pink. DHS
stock is low enough as it is with various government agencies. We don’t need this.

  “The next time I get a call from any Government Agency about you, it better be proclaiming accolades about how you and DHS are bending over backwards to work this situation. We are extremely shorthanded right now but don’t think that I can’t recall you. Hell, a trained monkey could do better that this.”

  Before Macklin could object, the phone went dead.

  May 5th, Friday, 8:45 pm PDT

  Dave Tippet was just cleaning up after dinner when he heard someone playing the blues on an acoustic guitar outside. It could only be his neighbor. Chad was a pretty good amateur guitarist. He played for all the kid’s birthdays until they got too old and too cool. He still played to woo his wife and last year, when they took a week long guys-only road trip to Jackson Hot Springs in Montana to drink beer and cross country ski, he had played every night in the bar at the resort and got them both of them free drinks all night long. He could play oldies, country, and folk but he saved the blues for when he was really feeling low.

  Dave grabbed a couple of beers out of his fridge and headed out to the patio. The sun had already gone down but it was still light enough to see Chad and his old 1937 Gibson L-50. His eyes were closed and he was doing some finger work on a blues tune he had been writing unsuccessfully for the last ten years.

  “How about a beer,” said Dave far enough out so he didn't startle Chad.

  The music stopped as Chad put the old guitar lovingly in its case and closed the lid.